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This week Maggie Breslin, a former Carnegie Mellon design grad, visited our Designing for Service class to hear about our University of Pittsburgh Medical Center projects and give a presentation on her service design work for the Sparc Innovation Program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

She described her role as both understanding and making. But what do you make if you’re a service designer? A composition of elements—space, technology, people and roles, processes, and tools—within a given context. Adding, subtracting, and manipulating those elements is the work of service design, she said.

Part of her job as a designer is also to steward the customer experience. In healthcare, service is often designed as a rational systems, but she points out there is also an emotional system, through which the most interesting, most powerful information, is revealed.

The idea of the emotional system, or feeling system, as she sometimes said, got me thinking about the complexity we face as designers when you truly consider the dimensions of human behavior. As evidence of this, Maggie said they start every project by talking to patients in order to reconnect to that moment. “You can never talk to too many patients,” she said. Further, their process is to prototype with actual patients and doctors because the emotional piece is too hard to predict.

Regarding design, Maggie stressed the importance of storytelling, making, and critique. She claimed that if you can’t tell a good story, you can’t affect change within an organization. By telling a story, you can immerse your audience in the experience, which works better than a presentation, she said.

This speaks to the value of video sketches over presentations. As designers, we seek to envision the future and share that vision with others. Stories are an excellent way to convey that vision, and visualizing the story works even better. And while video sketches can do this, Maggie acknowledged that there is a lot of opportunity to do something different. The key, she said, is to find a way to make an idea stick.

As for making, that is a skill that separates the designer from other practices. Designers translate understanding into making, she said. Making is key. This point is echoed by another School of Design alum, Dan Saffer, on A Brief Message. Maggie recognized the value of all the making she had to do as a grad student, even when the making seemed unrelated to her field of study.

Finally, she expressed critique as a skill the differentiates the designer. I had not considered critique to be a skill, but it makes sense. She put it in terms of being able to share work and ideas without being fearful of criticism, and in fact welcoming the criticism because you know it will make your work all the better. In addition to taking criticism, she also acknowledged that because of our experience with critique, we are skilled at giving criticism as well.

The last thing she mentioned that I really appreciated was an example of designing for interaction that involves no technology or interface. She showed a video where a doctor was having difficulty talking to a patient about quitting smoking. Designing for a conversation…that too is interaction design.

For the airport security service design project and for my current service design project, my team has defined design principles to shape the final solution and ensure a benchmark of success. For airport security example, saying goodbye was a design principle. In order for our solution to be considered a success, had to address providing a place for people to say goodbye.

But how do you come up with design principles?

First, you need to do research. The way I view design principles are a reflection of the needs and values that were witnessed during the research. My current service design team had a recent meeting where we began defining design principles and we talked about how the principles are similar to need and values, but not quite the same. Perhaps it can be articulated in terms of “our solution must address design principle X in order to fulfill need Y.” And it may be that a design principle addresses many needs.

Even with good research, coming up with the principles isn’t easy. It took us a couple weeks to come up with the design principles for the Charmr this summer at Adaptive Path. And starting out can be intimidating because your developing powerful statements that drive the product.

For the airport security project, my team found it helpful to phrase the principles in the voice of the primary stakeholders. We asked ourselves, if this person were to describe what the end thing should be, what would she say? We found ourselves beginning the phrase with “Help me…” For example, “Help me communicate to passengers,” and “Help me say goodbye.”

For my current service design project, we used this same technique, and it really helped get the ideas flowing. It seemed to be easier for team members to put themselves in the shoes of the stakeholders and say, “Help me…” than to ask people to shout out design principles. One is concrete, the other abstract, and hence more difficult to do. It also provides the sense that you already have something started, you just need to complete it, which can help overcome the blank slate.

So in your next attempt to begin synthesizing your research and develop design principles, consider using the “Help me…” statement. It may just help you.

For our first project in Designing for Service, our groups were asked to create a service that will foster flow at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security screening stations at the airport. The two biggest restrictions we had were little experience in designing a service and having only one week to complete the project.

Our team started with five, but whittled down to three after two dropped the course. No worries, as through the luck of the draw the remaining team members were excellent to work with—Kipum Lee, a fellow second year interaction design peer who spent his summer working at IDEO in Chicago, and Kara Tennant, a first year CPID graduate student coming from the world of graphic design.

Since we didn’t have much time to do research, we started with our experiences using directed storytelling on each other. But we itched for something with more juice and headed out to Pittsburgh International Airport for a morning of observation.

It’s amazing how much you can learn just by watching. We stayed for two hours, taking notes and photos. We diagrammed our findings and called it a day.

A few days later we reconvened and determined our design principles: Communicate to Passengers; Feel in Control; Say Goodbye. We came up with the latter principle after noticing all the awkward goodbyes that were taking place at the security checkpoint.

We then created several concept ideas for each design principle, which were captured on card stock so they could be shared with TSA and be something that TSA could share with each other to start having meaningful conversations about the experience. So our service was directed at engaging TSA in a conversation about design opportunities that they might want to explore further.

Each card contains a concept with a sketch and a description and is color coded to correspond to each design principle.

Our work was displayed this past weekend at the Design Research Conference during Shelley Evenson’s presentation on Designing Services.

I should note that this was a project invented by Shelley Evenson, and was not in collaboration with TSA.

Even if you have little time, doing some research is better than none. And a little observation goes a long way to discovering opportunities hidden in plain sight.

Presentation

Another successful aspect of this project was our presentation. We decided to tell the story using the photos we took at the airport coupled with a key point that each revealed to us or a question that begged asking. From that we were able to make the case for our design principles, and from those, the concepts and cards as a final deliverable.

Download the presentation (10 MB)

We did it! After nine months of planning, the conference went off splendidly. The team and I are pretty pleased with ourselves.

We succeeded in bringing in more money and more registrations than we had hoped, and were also successful in bringing together a diverse group of speakers and attendees. We got a lot of praise from attendees during the conference. And that was great.

Leading up to the conference, I started getting sick. That’s what lots of stress and bad eating habits will do. But adrenalin kept me going.

On Friday, it was good that we only had two workshops and about 50 participants, as we experienced a lot of registration difficulties and were nearly overwhelmed. By Saturday morning, however, we had much of the process sorted.

Saturday morning I gave a very short introduction, during which I forgot half of what I planned to say due to nervousness and my clogged head. But who cares when you’re followed by Martin Wattenberg!

I got to meet some great people, including Chris Downs, Mark Jones, Allan Chochinov, Robert Frabricant, Harold Hambrose, Jennifer Leonard, Daniela Sangiorgi…well, I guess all the speakers really. Mark, Allan, Jennifer and I stayed up pretty on Saturday and even did a little drinking and dialing. Shelley Evenson took it well.

I also got to see familiar faces, like Todd Wilkens, Alexa Andrzejewski, and Irene Chong, all of whom I worked with during the summer at Adaptive Path.

As far as the gist of the day, Saturday seemed to either confuse or engage everyone, so much so that the ensuing conversations at the Warhol party caused Chris Downs of live|work to redo his keynote presentation for Sunday morning.

Chris’ keynote really set the pace for Sunday, which turned out to be a very powerful and inspiring day. But it may not have seemed as such without the previous day’s presentations and conversations. The conference concluded with everyone together for Oliver King’s panel and Richard Buchanan’s keynote, both of which everyone seemed to enjoy.

I was happy to have been able to attend most of the presentations. I missed one set on Sunday morning, feeling like I needed a break. But with my mind on keeping the show going, I did not have too much time to process, and I took zero notes. Fortunately, others did.

After the conference, I promptly went home and planted myself on the couch. I tried to sleep but got up to write a thank you email to the other conference organizers: Ayça Akin, Matt Forrest, Joe Iloreta, and Kipum Lee.

The past two days I’ve been recuperated, quite literally, as my illness finally took over. On Monday I panicked about my thesis. But by Tuesday morning, I clambered up the rocky slope I was on, and could at least see the mountain range in front of me left to climb. This brought about some peace.

So Emergence is over…or is it? There’s still a lot of updates to make to the website, including uploading presentations and podcasts. And if we’re wise, we’ll start planning next year’s conference now.

Because I’m in my second year as a graduate design student, half of my course load is taken up by my thesis project and paper (note to self: start working on those). The two classes I’m currently signed up for are Social Web with Jason Hong and Robert Kraut, and Designing for Service with Shelley Evenson.

About one minute into the social web class this morning I decided it wasn’t for me. It felt like covered ground. And there was some Drupal component, which really turned me off, having developed the International Transplant Nurses Society site with said open source CMS. So I plan to drop it.

For the service class, we’re first looking at redesigning the TSA security experience at airports. And then we’re doing a project with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. We will get more info on the latter project next week. Shelley managed to pull out her iPhone during the lecture as a prop, which made me laugh (inside).

To make up for the dropped social web class, I’m trying to get an independent study rolling with Kristin Hughes, Stacie Rohrback, and Dan Boyarski working on strengthening my composition and type skills. If that fails, I may take intro to industrial design fundamentals (a mini) and Performance Text, a mini with Kristin Hughes the second half of the semester.

Or I could take Design Methods with Richard Buchanan. But 8:30 am, Friday?

I’ve been busting my balls on Emergence over the summer, and things have kicked into high gear with the conference less than two weeks away.

Overall, we’re in a good place. We’ve already matched last year’s attendance, and the lineup is one that I’m excited about and believe will appeal to a variety of designers.

While the framework has been service design, with trying to reach out to all design disciplines, service design feels more like one of the themes, rather than the focus. In that sense, it feels more like a conference around emerging design ideas.

I wrote a post on the Emergence website last week on why you shouldn’t miss the conference. Read it, if you haven’t. I hope to see you there.

We decided to build off the momentum from last year’s Emergence conference and tackle service design again. But “again” is really the wrong way to put it, because that’s not how we’re thinking about it.

The theme is Exploring the Boundaries of Service Design, and it will take place September 7–9. Our goal is to explore the boundaries and interrelatedness of design disciplines within the realm of service design, which wasn’t really done last year. Specifically, we want to address service design’s relevance to communication design, interaction design, and industrial design. And really we hope to make this year’s conference different.

So does this mean Emergence is the service design conference? We considered this seriously, and the answer is no. Going forward, Emergence will remain a conference that focuses on emerging design themes. But with this being only the second year, and having only scratched the surface of service design last year, we believe it makes sense to give it another whirl this year.

I got the Emergence website up and running over the weekend. By up and running, I mean it’s dynamically driven and has an RSS feed, but it’s not in its final form. We outlined the content also this weekend, and will be finalizing the design and layout over the next few weeks.

The site will have regular updates on our progress and guest postings (we hope) to help build anticipation for those who plan to attend and create a dialogue with those who cannot. If you have any ideas for the site, let me know.

We are currently working on identifying keynote speakers, and will also get a call for papers out soon. Lots to do. Little time.

I read the following quote in the appendix of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which a friend laid in my lap while I was drinking beer and searching for new clothes online at 1 a.m.

I wished to show that space-time is not necessarily something to which one can ascribe a separate existence, independently of the actual objects of physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spacially extended. In this way the concept of “empty space” loses its meaning.
–Albert Einstein

It reminded me of the talk Stefan Holmlid gave at the Emergence conference, titled “Introducing White Space in Service Design: This Space Intentionally Left Blank.”

Here’s an excerpt of my notes from the talk:

White space in service design modeling: the space in time between two actions; instead of focusing on what happens between, we look at the actions. We look at this as something the service doesn’t depend on, but it does, in order for other things to take place.

I wonder what kind of conversation Stefan and Einstein might have.

Stephan concluded his talk with ee cummings, who is one of the first poets that I took an interest in. It made me feel nostalgic.

“nothing” the unjust man complained
“is just” (”or un-” the just rejoined
34 in 73 poems by from ee cummings

Today I attended Emergence, a conference put together by Carnegie Mellon School of Design graduate students. The focus on the inaugural event is service design, which the students identified as an emerging field in design. This conference is the first international service design conference.

I didn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t really know much about service design before the conference. But after listening to a handful of talks given by leaders in the industry from around the world, it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s much more clear.

Imagine services that provide what you want and make your life better. That decrease the amount of time you spend in the emergency room. Or eliminate the emergency room in lieu of a private waiting room. That help you make good decisions about the products you need. That don’t overwhelm you.

Sounds good doesn’t it? That’s what these people do: redesign hospital services, retail store experiences, customer service experiences.

And with 80 percent of US GDP related to service, there’s a huge market that seems to have very few players.

The two companies that really stood out for me today were live|work and Engine, though they’re both based in the United Kingdom.

Speaking of which, I was impressed to see such an international crowd, including speakers and attendees from the UK, South Korea, and Australia.

I took a bunch of notes, which I will post later, so I won?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t get into the details of what was covered. But I will say that listening to the speakers today has given me yet another appreciation of what design can do to improve peoples?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ lives, and has continued my education of design as something much broader and applicable than I had previously imagined.

The more I think about my role in design, the more enticed I am with the idea that, through design, I can make the world a better place. And I was inspired that the folks involved in service design have this vision to improve our lives.